On March 13, we revealed that a new consumer subscription offering, Office 365 Personal, would be coming this spring. Today we’re announcing that it’s available for purchase–$69.99 USD/year or $6.99 USD/month (ERP)1–online at Office365.com, at Microsoft Stores and through online and retail partners.

An Office 365 Personal subscription allows for one PC or Mac, and one tablet (including iPad) to be connected to the service, and is the best option for individuals interested in using Office 365. By offering Office 365 Personal, in addition to Office 365 Home, we are better positioned to deliver the right Office to a broader range of households–whether it’s an individual or a family of five.

Whichever Office 365 is right for you, you’ll enjoy the freedom to get work done at home, school, or on the go–on any device.

I was thinking the exact same. I have a desktop and a laptop. I use the desktop at home for editing documents, and I use my laptop at school for editing documents. It would be a lot smarter if Office Personal could be installed on multiple devices, but could only be used for document editing on one device at a time. This would of course mean an active internet connection would be a requirement, but I doubt anyone could really trick their way around this form of authentication, because at one point they would go on the internet and Office would check its servers for authentication.

Do you need a subscription to Office 365 Personal in order to create and edit documents on an iPad, or will the higher level subscriptions also allow this? (My daughter is an Apple junkie and already has an Office 365 University subscription.)

Each extension has an individual Price, and is an add-on to your subscription.
Aka. if you want the Skype talk-time you get a discount for having your subscription, but it’s not included.
And you don’t ‘add’ people to your subscription. The Office 365 Home/Family Edition costs slightly less than the Personal Edition, because you’re buying 5 combined licenses, instead of 5 individual licenses. This creates and incentitive for households and Groups of people to purchase the Home/Family Edition, but Groups of less than 5 people can pay a Little bit more and get what they pay for.

I use Office 2011 on the Mac. I’m mostly happy with it, but there is no way I would subscribe to Office 365 for a few reasons:
1. Office 2011 is the latest version available for the Mac. Why would I pay a subscription for a product that is upgraded once every three years?
2. Significant bugs remain unaddressed, including some (e.g. hyperlinks in PDF generated by office on the Mac do not work) that predated Office 2011.

I don’t argue with the pricing of the Office 365 Home subscription — or at least I wouldn’t if the subscription actually brought bug fixes and updates. But as it seems to bring neither, I would say a fair price would be $0.

Office 2011 doesn’t bother me too much, because of Virtualisation.
I am more concerned whether a Mac with BootCamp or Parallels/Fusion/VirtualBox will be classed as one Mac and one PC, and therefore be unable to take advantage of 365 Personal.
Although it may be harder for Microsoft to police, allowing Native Mac Versions (2011 or whatever is around the corner) *and* Native Windows Versions (either via VM or Bootcamp) would definitely encourage it as an option for me.

I’m excited for this! I know that iPad apps are available and Android apps are likely under development. And this announcement might be a teaser that Modern UI Office apps for Windows 8 and RT will arrive any time now.

As far as I know, Windows tablets only support the desktop version and would be counted as a PC/Mac install. Did I get the story right? If not, how can there be a way to distinguish a Windows tablet install and a Windows PC install?

I wonder how this is going to work out. My Windows tablet does not have Office, but I would like to install Office on it. This could be my big chance! All I need to know is whether I will be able to install it on my Windows PC as well.

Understand that the convergence of device categories can make it difficult to define some devices. For this, we have built in some flexibility so a subscriber can define their Windows tablet as either a PC or a tablet.

Can you please tell me how to do this? I’ve been on 2 separate chats with MS support this morning and neither had a clue. I have 3 tablets counting as PC installs and a 4th on the way that I won’t be able to activate because I have 2 PC installs. That’s putting me at 5 PC installs, so no more installs available. Please help, it’s driving me nuts!!!!

I have a PC and a Lenovo Yoga which has a keyboard that can fold behind the screen, and the device can then be used as pure tablet. Can I buy an Office 365 personal version and then use the PC licence for my desktop and the tablet licence for my yoga?